Saul Steinberg: A Biography

by Deirdre Bair

  “invented a new world”: Bueno, Saul Steinberg e o Brasil, pp. 127–28.

  “You could stand a matchstick”: Flavio Motta, “Steinberg no Brasil,” Habitat (São Paulo) no. 9 (1952): 17.

  “His bottle-end glasses”: Ibid., p. 17; Pietro Bardi, Outros textos, collected papers in MASP; both quoted in Bueno, “Saul Steinberg e o Brasil,” pp. 128–29.

  When they went to stay in the House of Glass: ST to AB, September 26, 1952; S:I, p. 256; Bueno, “Saul Steinberg e o Brasil,” p. 129.

  “tropical Bucharest”: ST to AB, September 26, 1952.

  He made drawings of these: Among them Salvador, Manaus, Amazonas, Petropolis, Bahia, Belém, and Recife. Many are in YCAL, Sketchbook 3201; Manaus is 4454.

  He needed thirty drawings: ST, datebook, November 21, 1952, YCAL, Box 3, Folder “Appointment Books 1951–52.” His prices ranged from $250 to $300 for each of the thirty.

  He had not done any lucrative work: The container corporation was not identified by name in YCAL, Box 56, and according to SSF it was never realized.

  “The general feeling … is that”: Hallmark Cards to ST, June 6, 1952, YCAL, Box 56.

  The incident was not resolved: Hall to ST, June 9, 1952; Wheeler to Hall, June 16, 1952; Wheeler to Hall, June 30, 1952; all in YCAL, Box 56.

  Quite often Steinberg’s name was dangled: By the time of the 1978 WMAA retrospective, his collectors included Billy Wilder, Claude Bernard, Ivan Chermayeff, Max Pahlevsky, Ernst Beyeler, Eugene Meyer, Carter Burden, Charles Benenson, Richard Anuszkiewicz, Warner Leroy, and Gordon Bunshaft. From “List of Titles, Dates, and Owners,” HR/Getty, Box 45.

  “marketable mills”: This information comes from an interview with Eleanor Munro, May 31, 2007, and from a conversation with HS immediately afterward on the same date.

  If one of them made a slightly barbed comment: Multiple letters from Solomon Steinberg, Jacques Ghelber, Sylvia Haimovici, R. Marcovici, and Sali Marcovici, all late 1953, Romanian letters, YCAL.

  And as his feelings of civic responsibility deepened: ST told AB he was “defeated by Ike” when Eisenhower won the presidential election; November 13, 1952, SSF. A telegram from Nathan Straus invited him to be on television for a benefit for Mayor Robert Wagner along with Senator Nicholas Lehman, FDR Jr., Averell Harriman, and others. His uncatalogued papers at YCAL hold many requests from 1952 on from Jewish charities, organizations, and congregations, to all of which he gave generously.

  Because more than half were small: ST to Louis Gabriel Clayeux (Maeght’s chief administrator), February 4, 1953, copy SSF. A complete list of works in the show is in Derrière le Miroir, no. 53–54, March–April 1953 (Paris: Editions Pierre à Feu, Maeght Editeur).

  Maeght planned to dedicate an edition: I am grateful to Mary Lawrence Test, who explained that in actuality, the lithographs were offset lithographs (reproductions), and in France it was not necessary to make the distinction between the offset lithographic process and original lithographs.

  “eating chicken, drinking highballs”: ST to HS, March 2, 1953, AAA.

  Then he planned to check: ST to HS, “Monday” 1953, AAA.

  During his two months in Paris: Information that follows is from ST, datebook 1952, YCAL, Box 3.

  Mme. la Baronne Elie de Rothschild: Baroness Rothschild’s invitation is in the form of a phone message from his Paris hotel, YCAL Box 8, “Correspondence 1953.” After she gave ST her calling card, he began to collect cards from the members of the nobility he met in France, Italy, and other countries, all of which he pasted into a scrapbook now in YCAL. According to HS, interviews, September 9, 2007, and October 24, 2007, he collected them because “he was a snob and wanted everyone to know that he was there, he met them, these little duchessas and other royalty. He was a bit of a braggart, so he told me how many of them he seduced. But what he loved most about the cards was the print. His passion for the cards was not to whom they belonged but to the print they chose to use.”

  He went to the home of Meyer Chagall: Jean Hélion to ST, January 4, 1960, YCAL, Box 5, “Correspondence chiefly from 1960”: “I also enjoyed talking to you. I felt that I understood you, and that, wherever we went, we were keeping the same level and would always see each other clearly.”

  In the short time he and Steinberg knew each other: The uncatalogued YCAL boxes contain Hélion’s many letters to ST.

  On this trip he was especially interested: ST to HS, “Hotel de Crillon, Sunday 8,” internal evidence suggests May 1953, AAA.

  “beautiful and civilized city”: ST to HS, May 24, 1953, AAA.

  “terrible”: Still, he immortalized the trip by making wooden furniture representations of the hotel rooms, among them the Konak in Istanbul, where he stayed from May 24 to May 28, 1953. He remembered the rooms thirty years later in the 1980s, when he made three that were featured in a show at Pace Gallery, January 11–February 9, 2008: SSF works 7252, 6300, and 6328. YCAL sketchbook 3146 is a record of the Athens-Istanbul trip; some of the drawings from this trip appeared in Harper’s Magazine, February 1956, others in TNY, and still others in The Passport.

  The hardest part of the work: ST to HS, on stationery of Hotel de Crillon, “Friday,” (probably early June) 1953, AAA.

  “settle a book or two”: ST to HS, on stationery of Hotel France et Choiseul, n.d. (June 1953), AAA.

  He was actually relieved: Daniel Keel to ST, June 1, 1953, YCAL, Box 8. Keel’s firm, Diogenes Verlag in Zurich, had just bought the German rights for All in Line and taken an option for The Art of Living and all forthcoming books. Further correspondence between ST, Keel, and various American publishers and ST’s lawyer, Alexander Lindey, show the difficulties that arose in Germany over rights, permissions, and copyright between Rohwolt and Diogenes.

  As he had left instructions: ST to “Mlle. Claudine,” n.d., 1953. She was in charge of handling accounts at the gallery and was following his instructions to settle his account of F Fr 13,980 with a French rare-book seller, and to send the rest, the sum of 517,918 francs, to Moritz Steinberg.

  Once again the commercial work interfered: Correspondence relating to this show is in YCAL, Box 7.

  his lawyer had to prepare an affidavit: ST to AB, November 30, 1953, and December n.d., 1953. Documentation concerning “In the matter of the application of Architect dr. Aldo Buzzi for a non-immigration visa to the U.S. for approximately 3 months” is in YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.” ST affirms that he will support AB and that his average gross salary for the previous five years was $25,000 except for 1952, when he and HS earned $30,000.

  He chose, for example, cartoons: John I. H. Baur, ABC for Collectors of American Contemporary Art, with drawings by ST, distributed by the American Federation of Artists through Princeton Press, New York, 1954; E. H. Gombrich, the 1956 Mellon Lectures, Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press. Correspondence with William McGuire, YCAL, Box 8, indicates that it was he, not Gombrich, who made the request.

  “There must be an area”: James Geraghty to ST, November 10, 1954, YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.”

  It was frustrating to take time away: Lee Lorenz, interview, September 12, 2007; Fred Model, interview, September 24, 2007; IF, interview, October 12, 2007; Roger Angell, interview, May 6, 2008; HS, interviews 2007.

  After Cartier-Bresson introduced him: Dominique deMenil to ST, n.d. but internal evidence suggests spring 1954, YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.”

  Saul was nervously awaiting: In the ST/AB letters, AB gives the dates of his visit as December 23, 1953, to March 31, 1954; in his datebooks for 1953 and 1954, ST gives AB’s arrival as December 28 and departure as March 19, 1954.

  “The main thing”: HS interview, September 9, 1907.

  “It was always difficult”: HS, interview, October 11, 2007.

  “the second dinner”: HS, interviews, 2007.

  Architecture was very much on his mind: In 1958, the Neutras sent their nineteen-year-old son, who was studying briefly in New York, to ST. YCAL, Box 8, “Corresponden
ce 1958.”

  Steinberg followed the debates: Invitations from the Saarinens are in YCAL, Box 8.

  “the draftsman-laureate”: Girard to ST, correspondence in SSF.

  On the subject of architecture: These notes may have been made in connection with the “Built in USA” feature in Art News, February 1953.

  “sad, mixed up, scared”: HS to ST, undated letter from YCAL microfilm; internal evidence suggests mid-1954.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: BALKAN FATALISM

  “I’ve had and still have problems”: ST to AB, April 28, 1954, SSF.

  Just for fun, they were among: Certificate from New York Airways, n.d., YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.”

  “too much stuff in it”: ST, datebook entries, March–May 1954, YCAL, Box 3.

  He expressed his interest: From the catalogue of part of ST’s personal library, SSF. The books are now in possession of Anton von Dalen.

  After every trip, his postcard collection: The Long Island duck graced the New Yorker cover for the issue of May 11, 1987.

  “Whoever wants to know”: Jacques Barzun, God’s Country and Mine: A Declaration of Love Spiced with a Few Harsh Words of Reality (Boston: Little, Brown,1954), p. 159. ST owned and read The Baseball Encyclopedia, 8th ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1990).

  “It just confirmed my suspicions”: Leo Steinberg, remarks made at ST’s memorial service, “Remembering Saul, November 1, 1999,” SSF.

  The first thing he did: Information that follows is from HS, interviews, 2007.

  The players were intrigued: Some of the drawings appear in The Passport (1954), others in The Labyrinth (1960).

  “an incredible individual spirit”: Karen van Lengen, interview, November 4, 2007.

  His pitcher stares down: Billy Wilder wanted to buy all “the baseball items,” but ST would not sell them. BW to ST, October 6, 1955, YCAL, Box 7, “Correspondence 1954–55.”

  “an allegorical play”: ST, “Chronology,” WMAA, p. 240.

  This summer he needed to work: Lease for the house of J. Stanton Robbins, Wamphassuc Point, Stonington, Connecticut, from June 3 to July 22, 1954, YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence, 1954.”

  Hedda set up her studio and painted: The Concert was first performed in 1956 by the New York City Ballet, revised in 1958 for the Spoleto Festival, and revived by the NYC Ballet in 1971.

  “What the hell”: E. Hawley Truax wrote to ST on March 29, 1956, YCAL, Box 7, to tell him about Kenneth Bird, an artist who drew for Punch and was then working on a book about the development of humor. Bird wrote about “pictorial puns—the confusion of one shape with another instead of one word with another. Just as one word may be identical with another but for a trifling variation in one syllable, so the outline of a flowerpot may be identical with that of a head, except that the former tends to turn out at the top instead of in. And just as a verbal pun depends on the aptness of the substitution, so does the pictorial pun, which is, of course, in essence literary rather than pictorial—and that is, probably, why it appeals to ST.”

  “Our March 20 cover”: YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.”

  A nine-year-old from Brooklyn: Jeddu Keil to ST, YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.”

  Many kept his lawyer busy: Examples that follow are in YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.”

  “slightly more consideration”: Letter from Harvey M. Smith of Patterson Fabrics, April 27, 1954, YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.” The German firm Rasch & Co. Tapetenfabrik wanted to reproduce his designs for a mass market because “there are no wealthy people in Germany but there is a big demand for modern products.” Letter to ST, December 21, 1954, YCAL, Box 7, “Correspondence 1954–55.”

  For a variety of reasons: Telegram, January 18, 1954, YCAL, Box 8, Folder 1954.

  It was a shock to everyone: Arnold Saint-Subber to ST, March 11, 1954; telegram from Saint-Subber, July 8, 1954; YCAL, Box 8, “Correspondence 1954.” YCAL, Box 62, contains an article from the New York Times, “Stiff Tests Start for Stage Design: Union Conducts 3-Day Exams for 72 Would-Be Members Expected to Know 26 Plays,” June 5, 1954, which states that ST was assigned “The Palace Scene” in King Lear, for which he was to create a “Romanesque period.” It quotes him as being “glum about his luck” and saying, “Why couldn’t I have gotten something Turkish, or Egyptian?”

  Nor was he mollified: NSMP to ST, April 24, 1954.

  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer asked permission: William D. Kelley, MGM Production Department, December 6, 1954, YCAL, Box 8.

  As Steinberg was striving to earn money: All of these requests are in YCAL, Boxes 7 and 8, correspondence folders from 1954 to1955.

  There were also requests from individuals: Kay Halle, a colleague from ST’s OSS days, n.d., YCAL, Box 8.

  “He thought this country”: HS, interview, 2007.

  The list of people he had to see: Datebook for 1954, YCAL, Box 3.

  “very sick”: ST to HS, n.d. but internal evidence suggests August 22–23, 1954, AAA.

  For the next several days, he had to force himself: I have relied on the sources named in S:I, p. 239, notes 89, 90, 91.

  “three incredible boys”: ST to HS, n.d. but internal evidence suggests between August 29 and September 3, 1954, AAA.

  On August 29 the partners in BBPR: ST to HS, August 29, 1954, AAA.

  Most of the guests were: ST to HS, September 3, 1954, Nice, AAA.

  “It was ok”: ST to HS, August 29, 1954, AAA. The film was Elementary School.

  He said he planned to see no one: From the generally undated letters in YCAL, envelopes postmarked in the early 1950s bear Ada’s married name, Ongari, and the address Viale Misurate 61, Milano.

  For the past several years: In a letter of May 9, 1952, she berates him because she spent the evening waiting for his phone call, which never came. She complains that he is not being honest with her, nor is he taking her seriously.

  There had been three previous postwar encounters: Ada to ST, April 5, 1955.

  She arranged for them to meet: She was living at Viale Misurata 61 and receiving letters from him at her friend’s postal box in her maiden name, A. Cassola. Ada to ST, Milano, May 5, 1952, YCAL, Box 7, Folder 8.

  When Ada wrote, it was usually to tell him: I cite all the correspondence between ST and HS, YCAL and AAA, and ST & Ada, YCAL, Boxes 7 and 8, dating from 1952 to 1955, and in particular Ada’s letter of April 5, 1955, YCAL Box 7, Folder 8.

  First she told him: Ada to ST, Roma, December 11, 1954, YCAL, Box 8.

  As soon as she told him she was a teacher: Senza Rete was a variety theater show directed by Carlo Alberto Chiesa and Vito Molinari. There is evidence that it was televised on October 31, 1954, on RAI. The writers were Alberto Bonucci, Paolo Panelli, and Zuffi, all of whom knew Steinberg.

  She was still angry: Lica Roman to ST, January 6, 1952, Romanian letters, YCAL, Box 56.

  As far as Rosa was concerned: Rosa Steinberg to ST, August 5, 1952, Romanian letters, YCAL, Box 56.

  Rosa was crafty enough: Rosa Steinberg to HS, November 16, 1952, Romanian letters, YCAL, Box 56.

  “a striped suit”: ST to HS, Sunday, September 19, 1954, Connaught Hotel, London, AAA.

  Everything became formulaic: Ibid.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: SOME SORT OF BREAKDOWN

  “I’ve been an inflated balloon”: ST to HS, “Sunday: [Hotel] St. James et d’Albany,” internal evidence suggests Paris, spring 1955, AAA.

  There were two shows: ST, 1955 calendar/datebook, entry for November 23–26, YCAL, Box 3. The San Francisco exhibition is not listed in SSF’s exhibition history, and as there is no other information pertaining to it, it was most likely never realized.

  He was unable to sleep: ST to HS, “Saturday,” internal evidence suggests Paris, January–February 1955, AAA.

  His intention was to take a short trip: “He always paid his fair share and never complained about it, but he was always on the lookout for deductions because he had so many people to support. He thought the money was better used directly
by them than by Uncle Sam.” HS, interview, 2007.

  “dangerous looking Beale Street”: Information about the trip to Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia comes from a 1955 datebook/diary in YCAL, Box 3. Steinberg habitually walked out of any movie that did not hold his attention, and this one was such an unlikely film for him to watch that when he entered it into the pocket calendar he was using as a diary of the trip, he punctuated its title with an exclamation point.

  “sheer fun”: HS, interview and telephone conversations, spring 2007.

  She was stunned: General information is from interviews with HS, and ST to HS, letters dated from early March through the end of April 1955, AAA.

  “Love is the only thing ”: Schopenhauer was one of her favorite philosophers, and her letters to ST hold frequent references and allusions to his philosophy. The letter is HS to ST, YCAL, microfilm reel 144–45, undated, but internal evidence places it in April 1955.

  Hedda told him to go: HS to ST, April 12, 1955, AAA.

  “honesty or truth”: ST to HS, April 1, 1955, AAA.

  She intended to send him off: HS to ST, YCAL, microfilm, n.d. but internal evidence is April 1955.

  “all sorts of sea monsters”: ST to HS, “Saturday” (March 18), 1955, AAA.

  “It’s not a ham gesture”: ST to HS, “Monday Morning” (March 20, 1955), AAA.

  “It was bad”: ST to HS, “March 23 wed.,” AAA.

  Although Steinberg had no faith in psychoanalysis: Dream diaries are scattered throughout YCAL boxes and are cited specifically where appropriate. In this instance, they are in his HS letters, many undated (as this one is) but clearly 1955, AAA.

  The setting was always: ST to HS, “Wednesday” (March 25, 1955), AAA.

  “There are—I didn’t know—two Tortoretos”: In a 1955 datebook, he kept as a diary of the European trip, he identified the first as Tortoreto Lido and the “real” one as Tortoreto Nereto; YCAL, Box 3. In R & S, pp. 39–41, he gives the wrong date, 1957, and other recollections made almost thirty years later differ from those that are more reliable, made at the time in the datebook and the HS letters.